promoting virtue and knowledge, and by recommending whatfoever may be either useful or ornamental to fociety. I know that the homage I now pay you, is offering a kind of violence to one who is as folicitous to shun applaufe, as he is affiduous to deferve it. But, my Lord, this is perhaps the only particular, in which your prudence will be always difappointed. While justice, candour, equanimity, a zeal for the good of your country, and the most perfuafive eloquence in bringing over others to it, are valuable diftinctions, You are not to expect that the Public will fo far comply with your inclinations It is nations, as to forbear celebrating fuch extraordinary qualities. in vain that you have endeavoured to conceal your share of merit, in the many national fervices which You have effected. Do what You will, the prefent age will be talking of your virtues, though pofterity alone will do them justice. Other men pass through oppofitions and contending interests in the ways of ambition; but your great abilities have been invited to power, and importuned to accept of advancement. Nor is it strange that this should happen to your Lordship, who could bring into the service of your Sovereign the arts and policies of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the most exact knowledge of our own constitution in particular, and of the interests of Europe in general; to which I must also add, a certain dignity in Yourself, that, to say the least of it, has been always equal to those great honours which have been conferred upon You. It is very well known, how much the Church owed to You in the most dangerous day it ever faw, that of the arraignment of its prelates; and how far the civil power, in the late and prefent reign, has been indebted to your counsels and wisdom. But to enumerate the great advantages which the public has received from your administration, would would be a more proper work for an hiftory than for an address of this nature. Your Lordship appears as great in your private life, as in the most important offices which You have borne. I would therefore rather choose to speak of the pleasure You afford all who are admitted into your converfation, of your elegant taste in all the polite parts of learning, of your great humanity and complacency of manners, and of the furprizing influence which is peculiar to You, in making every one, who converses with your Lordship, prefer You to himself, without thinking the less meanly of his own talents. But if I should take notice of all that might be observed in |